Board 8 > Any interest in a blind Horizon: Zero Dawn playthrough topic?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Well my internet is being ass so I guess I can stop caring about all my brilliant and amazing other online interests and just play a single player game for a while longer. Luckily for me I can just save whatever I type up to post whenever my connection deigns to function again because computers are capable of saving data. Mind blowing, I know.

I guess I'll take a bit of a detour to avoid potentially making dramatic progress and not being able to update on it quickly. You know, because I totally need an excuse to go off on side quests instead of progressing the main plot. There's a Cauldron not too far south of the Daytower and I might as well go pay it a visit. And I'm glad I did, because along the way are a pair of Sawtoothes who both are kind enough to give me their Hearts. Now I can get that...uh...Shadow something bow. Shadow Sharpshot Bow? That one. Been wanting to upgrade to it forever but haven't been able to. Now I can! Granted it will be a bit weaker for a while because I lack the mods to make it on par with the bow I currently have (and I don't have the skill that lets you reuse mods), but it will work out in the long run I'm sure. Anyway, Cauldron time!

Okay, technically first up were a pair of Shell Walkers that happened to be passing by and who gave me more trouble than I really should have had, but shh. I took down a Thunderjaw without taking damage earlier, I have a free pass to pretend that never happened.

Well this time the entrance is a bit different, I have to drop down a big hole to find a way in. Let's see what all happens inside here...This is Cauldron Rho, apparently. It features a Ravager in uncomfortably close quarters very early on, giving me a bad feeling about what nastiness might await deeper inside. I probably was expected by the game to stealth my way through that room, what with all the vents, but I went the guns blazing route instead. Worked out smoothly enough. Some fancy platforming later and we come to a room with a Ravager, two Longlegs and a bunch of Watchers. Tons of vents here, but fuck stealth, I'm luring these things one at a time and killing them. It was at least partially intentional anyway.

The final room featured a Snapmaw in the middle, with a Ravager joining the fray once it was released. I laid down some traps in advance but I think I accidentally shot the detonating ones because they didn't exactly accomplish much <_< Oh well, I'll get it right some day. Now I can override more machines! Hooray! Maybe I'll actually take advantage of this ability at some point...nah probably not
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Picking up with stuff that matters, we go to Meridian to investigate Dervahl's terrorist plot. Avad wants him caught alive, which Erend understandably doesn't like. We go to a warehouse and find a bomb. Our solution...is to push the blaze upstairs out a window, then run and hope we live? Without even checking to see if the area the blaze would be falling on is clear of people? Uh, Aloy, this is not your brightest moment. What the fuck seriously. Now Erend goes back to protect Avad while Aloy looks around, suspecting there may be more to this than appears to be the case. We track Dervahl to a secret passage he used to infiltrate the palace. And then his desire to make Avad see Meridian go up in smoke fucked him over because he got distracted when the explosion didn't go off and forgot to actually, you know, kill the guy he wanted to kill.

An epic battle ensued in which...Dervahl died pretty much instantly to an arrow to the head. The rest of his dudes and the Glinthawks he summoned put up more of a fight, but it was nothing serious. Dervahl is taken captive and will be given to the Oseram for presumably a long and painful death, Erend and Avad are grateful, everybody is happy. Surprisingly, considering we kind of blew up a warehouse in a crowded city without thinking it through at all and then started an epic battle in the kings court. Actually I don't know if that Blameless Marad or Marid or whatever his name was is still alive or not, haven't seem him yet. I'm sure he's around somewhere...or dead. That's also a possibility. Regardless, Meridian is saved and Aloy is off to Maker's End to pursue the plot.
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Machine overrides are fun especially if you're playing stealthy. Sometimes I'd stage robot fight clubs via hacking one then hiding to watch the fight.
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What all can you override, if I remember correctly it was the horses... and that was about as far as I got to be honest.
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

What all can you override, if I remember correctly it was the horses... and that was about as far as I got to be honest.

I guess spoiler the answer as to not give anything away.
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IIRC if you do all the cauldrons you can override almost every enemy type in the game.
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Murphiroth posted...

Machine overrides are fun especially if you're playing stealthy. Sometimes I'd stage robot fight clubs via hacking one then hiding to watch the fight.

I was actually thinking of trying to do something like this when the opportunity presented itself, that Cauldron gave me some pretty spiffy combat machines as override options like Snapmaws and Ravagers, if I can sneak up on one I'll try to turn it against its buddies and see what happens.

Anyway, on the way to Maker's End I stumble across...a gate held by Shadow Carja guys who aren't hostile? That's odd. Then I find the trail of a sidequest from Meridian where I need to find some guy that was part of a Robin Hood style steal from the rich scheme to feed the needy or something. So now I'm tracking that dude, and I get to a Shadow Carja fort that *is* hostile. As is the norm with me, I ignore any possibility of sneaking inside for a simple "kill 'em all" approach. I use stealth to kill them though, so that's kind of clever, right? Actually the way the enemies were surrounding the guy inside makes me think I couldn't have sneaked in anyway. Instead I used a ridiculous tactic where I climbed a ledge the enemies couldn't get up to, sniped an enemy, dropped back down and repeated it until they all died. That was fun. And stupid. Anyway back to Meridian to finish off this quest. The dude whose sword was stolen agrees to help the people who stole it and everything is resolved I guess. Yay? Now perhaps I can actually get to Maker's End without a distraction...who am I kidding.
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Alright back on track and maybe actually getting somewhere. Aloy decides to talk to herself about the woman who looks like her, and the spooky mysterious voice speaks over the Focus to her again. I will name this voice Billy Bob. Billy Bob informs us that the woman is named Elizabeth Sobeck (which Aloy notes is definitely an odd name in this setting, though it isn't in real life which means DUN DUN DUN something or other), that if Aloy goes to Maker's End she'll know her just as well as Billy Bob does, and also that he's left Aloy some equipment to help deal with the Eclipse dudes that are there. Billy Bob sure sounds helpful...he'll probably turn out to have goals that are at least somewhat not identical to ours.

Continuing on our path, Aloy has a dramatic and amazing encounter at a Trampler site. Planning to use her newly acquired override powers to great effect, our intrepid hero sneaks in and...no Tramplers were even there? What a great machine site, nothing present at all. And oh dear looks like I'm getting sidetracked again, because there's a bandit camp nearby a familiar face named Nil looking to team up again. Something tells me this will be a straight forward sniping exhibition. And while it wasn't quite perfect, it went smoothly enough. Got spotted a couple times but didn't take too much damage, ended up turning one of them into an opportunity to lure a dude into a silent strike, which in turn led one of the elite dudes (who I still can't silent strike) into my path, oblivious to the triple headshot coming his way. Hooray for Team Kill the Bandits with Arrows and a Spear...that's a shitty team name.

Okay it took a bit longed than intended because for whatever reason I never quite remember that I can pretty much just pop into the open, head shot two dudes, hide around a corner and repeat to mow down huge numbers of human enemies at once. But slow and steady wins the race, and also kills all the bandits and reveals to us that Nil was once a Carja soldier who confessed to war crimes and served two years in prison. Somehow I'm not surprised.
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As Aloy continues on her epic journey, she immediately sees a new machine, the Behemoth. Actually, two of them. And a Longleg. I don't really want to have to fight a brand new and probably strong machine with its buddy and a Longleg, so I'm just skipping past. Kind of sad but I'm sure I'll see more some day. With those spotted, I think I've seen one of all but one machine in the game, and the last one is presumably the Deathbringer that Olin was talking about. Just that thing, a Stormbird and a Behemoth and I'll have killed one of everything. Good thing these are machines we're talking about or I'd be starting to sound like Nil here.

Getting closer, I find myself between some Chargers and Eclipse guys. I blow up the Chargers, which alerts the cultists (really, a huge explosion just up the hill attracts attention, who could have guessed) but only one comes close enough to matter, so he dies. Then I chase the surviving Chargers around, which gets silly when several of them fall into a river and seem unable to get back out. Easy pickings! Now time to find this equipment cache Billy Bob left for me...and holy shit, it contains a +39% damage mod, now THAT is something I appreciate. Also there's a corrupted zone nearby, I think it's slightly lower level than that crazy double Rockbreaker one. Snapmaws and/or Ravagers, maybe? Oh, two Ravagers and a Fire Bellowback. I was just thinking that I hadn't seen one of those in a while (still have only ever seen one Freeze Bellowback). Fucked up a bit and took more damage than I would have liked (the melee attacks on those corrupted Ravagers HURT) but it got done. Yay, cleansing corruption.

The first couple of Eclipse dudes go down fast, stealth arrows all around on the first little group who I backtracked just to kill, a few stealth shots and a lot of open fighting to wipe out the second group. This goes a lot faster when I don't hide for ages in between every shot. The next area...lol. After some sniping, a failed strike from above on a Watcher lead to me retreating to avoid bringing the entire camp down on me, and then...everything chasing me vanished. And I went back up and the enemies I killed were back in place. Apparently I discovered the exact distance that I have to travel to despawn and respawn this encounter. Hooray for programming! Now to do this again correctly...easy enough. Although I overheard some dialogue between Eclipse guys that didn't trigger until after everyone was already dead...hooray for glitches? Hooray for programming!

Coming around the corner, strange noises are heard, and Aloy's PURPLEVISION (you thought I'd dropped that, didn't you?) allows her to stare through solid rock and see...a Deathbringer, the final machine left unrecorded in the notebook. I guess I'll be getting to fight one of these guys here. And from the looks of it, it's got a million weapons to use and parts to break. Seems like one tough customer, wonder how many allies it will have with it to distract me? Quite a lot, apparently. I kill a few from stealth, then I fuck up and get spotted. Epic battle time? Billy Bob chimes in to say he's disabling the Focus of the Eclipse officer, and...uh...the Deathbringer sits still shooting with minimal accuracy while I pop out, shoot its weak points a couple of times and it dies? That was anti-climactic. Do they have more health in later appearances? Do they move? Did I just spend enough time in hiding that this one overheated on its own and that's why it took so much damage? Because that thing got wrecked like it was nothing. Oh well, time to loot the officer and see what's up. Join us next time for...stuff!
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Picking up the Eclipse dude's Focus, we see...swirling red Corruption lines and HADES speaks to us, being sad that something called "The Entity" lives. I'm guessing that's us. The Focus explodes, Aloy calls out to Billy Bob for answers and receives silence, and so we proceed with our quest to hopefully figure out what the hell is going on in this story some day. Squeezing through a crack, Aloy discovers a door much like the one underneath All-Mother (the mountain, I think that's its name at least, man I haven't been back to talk to the Nora in ages). She's about to turn away in frustration when it scans her and...identifies her as Dr. Sobeck and lets her in? Cool. Time to explore and hopefully learn some things, because learning leads to knowledge and knowledge is power.

Wandering into the cave, an automated voice tells us we are...a lot of days late to a meeting. 974 years late by my calculation. That's pretty late. I'm not sure this is really the right time for humor, game. Conveying that information via the number of days is a bit silly for what seems like it should be a serious part of the story. Aloy is at least suitably confused by all this. We descend deeper into the ruins...I'm assuming there probably won't be much in the way of enemies down here, but you never know. So yes, no enemies, just backstory. Lots and lots of backstory.

I'm assuming people reading this can remember this enough to not need a perfect summary of every single detail, so I can be brief. A dude named Ted Faro ran a company that created robots (the Corruptors and Deathbringers) that eventually went haywire and threatened to destroy the world (and it's implied the "glitch" that made them go rogue might have a more sinister explanation, maybe? Could just be me reading into it too much but with Elizabet Sobeck threatening to expose the "real" reason for the glitch and an audio log early suggesting Faro wanted a way to bypass the usual security on the robots he was building for someone, it kind of hints at something more...which I kind of hope isn't the case, at least not in the most obvious way possible). Sobeck, a former employee of his and super scientist extraordinaire, got called back to help fix the problem and came up with a plan called Project Zero Dawn, which seems very ominous given that Faro seemed horrified by it. Now I'm off to find out what that's all about.

Also got to "meet" via PURPLEVISION holographic projection Billy Bob...who is actually named Sylens. And kind of a douchebag. Didn't see that one coming...oh wait, yes I did. He's apparently been seeking info on the past for a long time and wants to work with us to figure out exactly what Zero Dawn was. He drops some hints that it's theoretically possible Elizabet Sobeck could still be alive due to her having been researching various immortality methods in life, but dismisses it as too unlikely. So she probably will turn up "alive" in some way, but probably not anything resembling a normal human being. Sylens also doesn't seem to know much about Hades, sadly. Guess that's for a future exposition dump.

Anyway, that was a good way to deal with insomnia, learning about how Earth got fucked. Hooray?
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Hey now I can say this without spoilers.

Fuck Ted Faro.
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Yeah I think there's one universal unequivocal truth in video games

Fuck Ted Faro
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Meh, it's kind of too predictable for me to really feel it. At least there's some semblance of actual character to him with his clear distress over the way it all went wrong, and horror at whatever Zero Dawn was. Honestly I was expecting him to just be pure Professor Puppy Kicker the evil CEO who was cool with killing himself if that's what it took to ensure other people suffered too. Maybe he'll turn out that way with later revelations, I don't know but I hope not.

Well, insomnia kept me up all night so the only way to get back to normal is to stay awake as long as I can and hopefully readjust quickly. Luckily I have nothing else to do today, so I can play a bit more, at least until I stop being able to focus. Just going to do some side stuff right now, namely, freeing Olin's family. Kind of a dick move to have left that hanging while I went wandering off across the world, huh? I use my usual stealth...Olin just ran in and started whacking things, which honestly works for me because it kept the enemies focused on him while I just effortlessly picked them off. Can I have meat shield NPCs with me wherever I go? If only there were some sort of ability I could use to, I don't know, temporarily make a machine help me...

A pair of bickering merchants wanted some machine parts, well, each wanted a part and couldn't agree on which they needed, so I just got both of them. Not sure how they stay in business when they're too busy arguing to talk to anyone else, but hey, I got some sort of reward out of it. Now, off to visit some estate that got attacked by machines. I can't really remember what I was going there for, but I'm sure it will make sense when I get there. Oh, some dude wanted me to clear it out. And turns out he was the one that lured the machines there to kill his family so he could inherit their wealth. And then the Glinthawks he summoned killed him. That was a sequence of events alright.
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That happened to ne a lot

Went to a place for a mission and totally forgot why I needed to go there
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XIII_rocks posted...

That happened to ne a lot

Went to a place for a mission and totally forgot why I needed to go there

Indeed. I feel like it's generally pretty safe to assume "to kill some stuff" is the explanation. Just hope I don't have any "deliver food to orphans" quests I've forgotten about...

Moving on, some Sun Priest wanted me to go do some errands for people that are upset over their family's treatment by the previous king, or something along those lines. First up is a shrine being blockaded by a cranky loser priest who still thinks the Mad Sun King was right but lacks the balls to do anything other than stand around whining about it, which he only does until someone makes an issue of it and then he runs away. Loser. Next up was a guy that wanted to paint a symbol on a cliff that had Glinthawks on it. Odd custom, but who am I to judge, I'm the guy that rambles about PURPLEVISION. Finally I need to clear a lake of a pair of Snapmaws, where I do the unthinkable and actually override one! Get out your party hats people because this is a special occasion! The other one got slaughtered, I lit it on fire and while it was thrashing around my Snapmaw annihilated it in short order. But then I had to kill mine since that was the objective. Oh well, it would never have worked out between us.

Back to Meridian to report in and the priest seems to think our work is making the rest of the sun priests ever so slightly more willing to respect the ways of the other tribes. I'm not sure why me helping other people would have that effect on them, but I've played enough video games to know just about anything can be achieved by traveling to the right places and killing the right things.
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Murphiroth posted...

Fuck Ted Faro.

Seriously fuck that dude hardcore
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Just caught up.
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And then the grand adventure resumed.

Since last night was a massive exposition fest and general plot progression thing, it seems only right that I wander off to the western side of the map in search of a Tallneck. Look, this is how I play video games, I do whatever random thing comes to mind. Sometimes I push through a game in a hurry, sometimes it takes forever because I get distracted. It makes sense in my mind, at least! Anyway, an odd moment happens when a pile of debris is available to search, but I have to hold the search button much longer than usual to get stuff from it. I pick up an item I'm pretty sure is only available from some pretty strong machines, then as I turn a weird sound happens and it looked like the debris pile had moved in some way...? My assumption was there was a Rockbreaker hiding on me, but I ended up making a lot of noise fighting some Scrappers and it never appeared, so maybe that was just...uh...me hallucinating...?

A dilemma appears, namely that I'm in a valley and where I want to go is on top of the ridge. I could take the long way around, but that's long. Obviously. So I do what any reasonable person would do: Get close enough to the base of the cliff that the campfire on top of it registers as discovered, then fast travel up because I can do that despite not having actually been up there before. Hooray for exploits! I almost stumble onto a Ravager that was just kind of walking in a circle around a rock for no apparent reason with nothing anywhere close to it, thought about overriding it but decided there's nothing else around for it to even fight. Seriously Ravager, what the hell were you doing? Another campfire has what look like AA guns around it, not the first time I've seen stuff like that laying around. There's some Tramplers I ignore and Longlegs I murder and then it's Tallneck time.

Okay actually I overrode one Longleg to help kill the other, then lured it into a fight with a nearby Ravager, then killed it because I don't know how long the override actually lasts, then that attracted an army of Watchers and a Fire Bellowback, and there are some more Ravagers nearby...tactical retreat is a valid option in situations like this, to let the enemies back off so I don't have to fight everything under the sun at once. Holy shit this Tallneck is well guarded, he's got a second Fire Bellowback with him, another pair of Longlegs and two more Ravagers just off his route, plus some Sawtoothes (Sawteeth?) fairly nearby as well. The Fire Bellowbacks go down easy enough to freeze arrows and then pain arrows, the (Redeye) Watchers are jokes and everything else is easy enough to not provoke.

There seems to be a settlement of some sort nearby, plus some non-hostile Shadow Carja guys fighting a ton of machines...might as well go help. By which I mean let them distract the enemies with their deaths. I somehow managed to override a Ravager with another one standing right next to it and not noticing me, then I just kind of looted and when I was done, my pet killbot had wiped out everything. Cool. There's also a corrupted zone, listed as level 34...the double Rockbreaker one was level 32, I think? I'm kind of afraid to see what hell awaits in there, but there's a campfire nearby to save it so it should be all good.

Speaking of corrupted zones, I swear there are a couple of extra ones on the map now in areas I'm sure weren't corrupted before. Do more just spawn as the game goes on or something?
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Solioxrz362 posted...

Murphiroth posted...

Fuck Ted Faro.

Seriously fuck that dude hardcore

Ted did nothing wrong
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Okay, this place has Shadow Carja dudes who aren't hostile, but then a path leads to some who are...? I'm confused and will now leave the area in protest. Time to check out that corrupted zone. Oh hey, fast traveling to that last campfire led to everything respawning. Dick move, game. Dick move. Now how will I get out from under two Longlegs and two Ravagers...sprint away on a path that only alerts some Striders it is! That shouldn't have worked, but it did and we'll just have to live with it. Now I can see into the corrupted zone...ooh, a Behemoth. I didn't even fight the regular versions of these that I saw earlier, and now there's at least one Corrupted one here, maybe more if I go deeper? This ought to be interesting...

Okay, two corrupted Behemoths and three corrupted Broadheads. That was brutal and my medicine/health potion stock is suddenly not very plentiful. Those Behemoths are pretty brutal, some of their attacks are tough to figure out how to avoid and they seem to have a lot of health, plus I couldn't get them frozen except by targeting the canisters (nine freeze arrows to one of them did nothing, though I did manage to freeze the first one with a canister shot). But, it's clear and that's good news. I have to wonder if there will be corrupted Thunderjaws/Stormbirds at some point...I might be better off not knowing.

Aloy heads off on an epic quest to...find a vantage. Along the way we override a Ravager who promptly returns to its business instead of helping with anything, shoot down a Glinthawk which leads to two Scrappers just magically showing up to scavenge, and get into a brawl with three Tramplers. A Glinthawk site is between me and my destination, so that ought to be good. Triple fire arrows wreck them easily enough now. Unfortunately I need to get down to get to that vantage and I kind of might have accidentally fallen to my death and undone a fair bit of machine killing progress, invalidating most of this paragraph in the process. Alright...new plan! Going to follow the main plot now and hope I don't senselessly kill myself in the process.
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Well, actually there's some stuff to do on the way, like clear out a corrupted zone that's on top of a vantage point. Chargers and a Fire Bellowback, looks straight forward enough. Then I think I'll do a side quest that involved investigating peaceful machines or something? I don't remember it very well, but it's pretty close to where the story is taking me so I might as well do it. The corrupted zone got cleared out easily enough and I found a datapoint that is basically a log of a conversation on an online dating side between some dude and a really shitty chatbot. That's...not quite what I was expecting. I'm sure I'll find the actual vantage spot somewhere around here...eventually...some day...man. I was so sure it would be up on a cliff or something that it took me a while to notice it was just laying out on the ground <_<

A question comes to mind. Is it possible to actually get to the location from the intro movie where Rost took baby Aloy to some mountain shrine thing to name her?

Anyway. Some detours happen and eventually progress begins to be made, slowly and agonizingly, on getting somewhere. My stockpile of healing materials is pretty low right now after all the nasty shit in those corrupted zones, so I'm going to have to hope I can either find more or be a really awesome player who never gets hit. Probably pretty obvious which is more likely...

Not much of note happens along the journey, just some Glinthawk beating and general avoidance of things I'm not in the mood to fight. So many of those machines like Chargers and Lancehorns that just run all over the place when you alert one, I have no desire to track down each and every single one of the damn things. We reach the Banuk camp where the machines are...peaceful? Right, I was looking for some dudes that were sent to investigate this. The Banuk seem to think it's some sort of machine spirit song in the air...unfortunately for them, Aloy is here to use PURPLEVISION to find mundane answers for all their religious questions. Checkmate, atheism! Wait, that's not how that works...anyway. A signal is coming from the top of the mountain, and we go to check it out.

Well well well. Looks like the Oseram dug up something that was sending a signal that was calming the machines. Although it seems like the artifact was dying anyway, I'm going to assign all blame to them because I'm a dick like that. The machines go haywire soon after, but a camp full of dudes wipes them out pretty damn fast. Well, that was a predictable ending. Guess I go back to Meridian to report to the guy who sent me, maybe something interesting will happen? Nope, not really. This quest was perhaps not the most productive use of my time <_<
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Aloy resumes her adventures heading north to the Grave Hoard or whatever it's called. Along the way she kills some bandits who were just kind of wandering in circles among the trees. Interesting hobby. Some Glinthawks also get in the way and boy am I getting tired of seeing groups of these things everywhere I go, they aren't even hard anymore, they just take a while to deal with because they constantly fly out of range and go wandering all over the place. Luckily I can sneak between them and the small army of Scrappers and Watchers who just showed up nearby for no apparent reason. There's a merchant hanging out in the midst of this, which is odd, and then some Eclipse dudes. Finally, I'm doing something! They die easily, but I'm assuming it will get more complicated than three spread out dudes and a corrupted Watcher soon enough...

The Grave-Hoard was apparently once US Robot Command or something? It looks like a giant doom fortress. Like, this is the most over the top "look how evil we are" doom fortress I've seen in a while. It looks cool, but it feels maybe a tad off from what it's supposed to be. Unless the big reveal ends up being "the Old Ones deliberately destroyed the world for shits and giggles", the old US government/top corporations should be more corrupt and short sighted than overtly malevolent, and this place screams malevolence. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, I don't think I've put this much time into thinking about and describing a location yet on this playthrough. Moving on!

Oh, we're going underground. Don't spend much time on indoors-ish combat in this game. Mowing down a few cultists, Aloy gets some audio logs of a battle from the past, half of which are just static and sounds. We're talking to Sylens as we go, but he's a douchebag as usual. The remains of some broken down Corruptors can be found in the entry, guess I know what these soldiers died fighting. They have banners up saying "Operation Enduring Victory". My victory will endure at least aw yeah! Aloy dives into water to go check some supply crates...I feel like diving into the water in here must be a great way to get hypothermia, we're high up in the snowy mountains here. Lucky for us this is a video game so that's not a threat.

Digging deeper, more audio logs reveal that apparently Europe got wiped out so bad the smoke from it was bringing permanent rain to the eastern US coast, and also that dropping buildings on swarms of robots was standard during the war...does this war have a name yet? I haven't seen one. I shall dub it the War. Very creative of me, thanks. The War sounds pretty rough, as the robot swarms were learning from every battle. I haven't quite figured out the code names used in the old days for each machine, I think the Scarab is a Corruptor, and Horus sounds like something that hasn't been seen yet (it supposedly can build new robots, so unless it's tied to the cauldrons we haven't seen that thing around), meaning the Deathbringer is...whatever that other thing was called? I don't quite remember. It sounds like the soldiers had some hope that Zero Dawn would fix everything, I'm guessing it's true nature, whatever it was, was not widely shared. Hopefully I'll find out what that is soon enough...
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Deeper and deeper we go, getting more looks at the past, ziplining into pits and trying to open a door. Oh video games, no one ever just has a key, there's always some puzzle or "follow the power lines" or something. Doors, every hero's greatest rival. It's odd that we're doing this little "puzzle" that consists of doing what the game obviously tells you to unlock a door when there's a pretty good chance we'll find dudes on the other side of the door anyway. Maybe they locked it behind them or something?

With that open, we do indeed find Eclipse dudes and a Scrapper inside. Stealth trivializes them as usual, with only a couple ever even getting an attack off before being brought down. Of note was the shock canister on the Scrapper being detonated to take half health off one of the elite cultist dudes, the first time I've used a machine's explosion to damage human dudes. I am officially the greatest strategic mind you've heard of since at least Thursday.

Now we come into a room where a gigantic tentacle monster machine is hanging and the Eclipse are working on it...I'm guessing this is a Horus? And those tentacles could be part of what was giving the exterior of this place such a doom fortress vibe, they look like some of the stuff that was jutting out. It drops a Deathbringer, which Aloy confirms me was called a Khopesh back in the day, and this one can move around, she notes. I had a feeling that first one was deliberately nerfed...with a bunch of goons and a full power Deathbringer, this is shaping up to be a tricky battle, although my high vantage point can likely be used to cheese it. Is that how it will go, first Deathbringer is nerfed, second one you're high above, and then the third one will be out in the open? We'll have to find out, but first I have a lot of stuff to kill.

Okay that was cheap as hell, I shot a dude, moved to the side to try to block the Deathbringer's line of sight, and it just shot the platform under me, destroying it and causing me to fall to my death instantly. Guess I have to figure out how to get down before I can play unless I want to roll the dice with "lol you die" bullshit. Wow this fight is the dumbest, the only ways down are to rappel in full view of everything? And if the Deathbringer notices anything it will detect you eventually and instant kill you via floor destruction that tracks your position faster than you can roll? What the fuck, can I just magically rappel down without being seen or something to make this work, because that would be stupid as hell and I'm not trying something so idiotic to test. Alright that was dumb, I got lucky in that the area you rappel from had a platform below it so the fall didn't kill me when the floor blew up. That Deathbringer was an intense as hell fight once the game wasn't pulling stupid bullshit on me though, I'm not sure why the notebook says its weak to shock when all 20 arrows with barely any pause between them had no effect on it, but sure. Eventually I figured that status effects are less valuable than just dishing out damage to its legs to knock it over. Pretty cool enemy, I'm terrified of the idea of facing one of those alongside something more serious than some shitty cultists, like a Corruptor...or a second Deathbringer.

Anyway, it's time to move on, this post is getting to be too big so I guess I'll leave the final revelations of this place for the next one. Beware my cliffhanger, mwahaha. I mean, there's no save point in between so obviously I'm going to continue right away, meaning the next update will be soon, but...shut up, pretend I'm making sense.
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Heading into what I expect is the final room, or close to it, we get a pretty cool audio log with Dr Sobeck talking to a General Herres about how Operation Enduring Victory has bought just barely enough time for Zero Dawn to be finished. The General also wanted a file to be archived that contained...basically his role in both integrating into the armed forces the machines that would become such a threat, and I guess also his enacting of a plan he knew would sacrifice millions across the world to buy time for Project Zero Dawn. I like this General Herres character, that brief little conversation was great. The hologram recording that's required to watch (the audio log was optional, it seems) basically expands on it, showing the rest of the military commanders not happy with the sacrifices being proposed but also unable to come up with a better idea. Herres' plan seemed to involve telling people about Project Zero Dawn, a secret weapons program that would save humanity...which I'm guessing was propaganda, as it's already been pretty heavily established by this point that whatever Zero Dawn was, it wasn't going to be pretty.

Oh. Well, it turns out we're not going to find out more quite yet, as that's the end of the dungeon. Now I need to go to the place Project Zero Dawn was being worked on, which tells me this whole area is in Utah I believe...but the exact location is underneath the Shadow Carja capital, and Sylens can't hack enough Focuses to make that plausible to infiltrate. So he's sending me off to crash their focus network some other way. Guess I've still got a ways to go here!
---

The Adventures of Aloy continue as we head west to the place we need to go, and stumble across a settlement I didn't know existed where I pick up three side quests. Investigate a missing 17 year old, investigate who has been stealing food, and...go pick something up and deliver it at the docks to a sketchy dude. Yeah, nothing could wrong with that one. I'll probably get around to those at some point, but first, I'm enjoying this whole progress thing so I think I'll make some more. South of town I come across a Sawtooth site that has one Sawtooth and a Bellowback of both fire and ice varieties? Why only one Sawtooth at a Sawtooth site? Oh well, I'm going to kill these things just for novelty, this is only the second Freeze Bellowback I've ever seen. Turns out blowing up the Fire guy lures in a second Sawtooth, who I override to help me with the Freeze Bellowback, after which...it just wanders off and I lose sight of him? Farewell, good Sir Sawtooth, may your travels be merry.

Nothing else of note happens until we get to our destination, where Sylens guides us up a cliff and then reveals that what we're doing here is...infiltrating the Eclipse's main base. No big deal or anything, right? This leads to him revealing he did some prior work with the Eclipse before turning against them, as Aloy realizes his knowledge of their operation pretty much requires that to be the case. She also gets very cranky when he reveals he assisted them in the past, probably because given his knowledge of how to spy on people via the Focus, he's the most likely explanation for how the Eclipse found out how to use Olin to spy on people and thus try to kill her at the Proving. But he's just a hologram here so of course he vanishes before anything can come of it.

Working our way into the base, we have to cut through several areas full of corrupted machines. The Scrappers put up a bit of a fight, but went down to my rarely used Blast Sling. Explosions can be heard in the distance but Sylens says not to worry about it. I am so inclined to trust this guy, he's so obviously trustworthy that I almost trust him as much as I would trust someone I don't trust at all. We get to the destination and discover the top of the Tallneck we were trying to get to has been moved. These guys dragged a broken Tallneck up here, then moved the top of it somewhere else? Must have been hard work! I can sneak past the guards or kill them...let's be real I'm not going to pull off the sneaking thing even if I try, so I'll just start shooting stuff. Sylens seems to want us to hurry, so instead I look around and discover a bunch of audio logs from Helis that show what a crazy fanatic he is. Hooray?

Coming around the corner, we find the top of the Tallneck, propped up in some weird structure. Sylens is really weirdly eager for us to get out of here, which makes me wonder if he's hiding something or just being his usual douchebag self. Aloy seems to suspect some sort of trouble is afoot, as do I honestly. Something will probably go wrong here...and it kind of does, as Hades turns out to be nearby and tries to fuck with us. Aloy still manages to destroy what we came here for, but is forced to make a dramatic retreat through armies of everything shooting all the things at her. So that happened. Now it's off to Sunfall to hopefully find out what Zero Dawn was, for real this time, really, legitimately. I hope.
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Nothing of interest happens on the way to Sunfall. Nothing that was boring happened either. Really I just walked in a straight line. Should get a lot more exciting once I head inside though!

It seems we can walk in casually at least part of the way. The Shadow Carja are so odd with how they're sometimes hostile and sometimes don't seem to care. We come across their "Sun Ring" where some people seem to have been thrown into a pit against a Behemoth. I have no idea if I can do anything about it but I'm not going to bother, I have enough stuff to get done that I don't need to be picking extra fights around here. It seems the Shadow Carja's king, the son of the old crazy one, is a young kid who seems in over his head, and they're hiring mercenaries or bounty hunters or whatever. A side quest pops up to get involved in stopping the death of a traitor who is apparently actually innocent, but I'll get around to that later. It seems kind of wacky that sneaking into this place is as simple as walking into an audience chamber and waiting for everyone to get distracted by the sounds of their own voices, but apparently that's how it works around here.

Okay seriously how do I just drop off a ledge where people are standing, go jumping across some rocks and climbing down a wall and not be seen by anyone? Did Aloy learn how to turn invisible or something?

We find a vent to use to get in, and Sylens warns us this is a point of no return. So is this the final dungeon? Or just a fake out where we won't be able to leave during the middle of it? I kind of feel like it might be the latter, there's still a lot of stuff that hasn't been resolved in the plot (dealing with Helis, finding out why Rost was an outcast to begin with, going back to the Nora at some point) in addition to the Zero Dawn business...not to mention there were several "Main" quests (revenge on the killers, that whole business with Dervahl) that I assume were relevant to the endgame and which don't fit into what's going on here, so there will probably be some follow up on those later. But maybe I'm wrong. Regardless, I'm going in and we'll see what happens. If given the choice to save inside I can always just make sure I'm holding onto my last save outside to be safe.

Alright, let's do this.
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Starting off with a bang, we run into a door that recognizes Aloy as Dr Sobeck...but malfunctions. We're forced to use an emergency procedure to force the door to open, which ends up attracting some outside attention. Guess I'm going to run into some trouble on the way out of here! Hopefully we can figure some stuff out before everything starts getting all explodey on us.

Heading in, a bunch of audio logs consist of the reception staff complaining about working conditions and also a reference to needing sound proofing because people in the lounge can hear those who scream or cry during a presentation...well that's not creepy at all. And then we see the presentation: General Herres informing people that extinction is inevitable and Zero Dawn's goal is to in some way prepare for what comes after. We don't find out the details yet though. The next room features some more datapoints, but it turns out some Shadow Carja dudes have gotten in through the vents and are probably not too happy with me, so I guess it's murder time.

Murder time doesn't last very long (though it certainly gets the blood flowing...and spilling) and we continue examining the area. Sounds like some of the people brought into this project handled it a lot better than others. No one seemed to like it much besides the one guy that sounds like he was mildly crazy in general. Probably not surprising that "we're all gonna die" didn't go over well.

And then...okay way too much stuff to summarize or I'd be filling this topic to 500 on my own right now. So I'll have to keep it brief

So Zero Dawn was about creating an AI that would be able to work out for itself how to rebuild life on Earth. I predicted the general concept but the exact execution of it is pretty neat. And Hades is a program designed to wipe everything out again if another restart becomes necessary. Why it's seemingly gone haywire (and why it's using the Faro robots that you'd expect it to be programmed not to fuck with) is unknown, but this does explain why it seemed to have a bit of a personality...especially since the guy in charge of the project was more than a little eccentric. Then we get captured by Helis and get dragged out to the Sun Ring to be sacrificed, but we escape with a mixture of ingenuity and Sylens making an appearance and actually not being a douchebag for a change. Well, not a total one. Now it's off to Nora territory to stop the Eclipse troops who were sent there to try to find us and kill everyone else. Why Hades wants us dead remains unknown, but I'll probably find out soon, it sure seems things are approaching the end now. But I'm going to take a break for a while, probably won't play more until tonight or tomorrow.

That whole sequence was pretty damn awesome.
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Almost sounds like you might be nearing the end, how many hours in are you?
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Somewhere over 30. It really doesn't feel like I've spent as long playing it as I have, but I guess those long journeys from one distraction to another really add up. And when I stop to think I realize I have been playing two or three hours most days since I started, with the days I haven't played being balanced out by the times like today where I played for much longer.
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Looks like you fired through this way faster than I did

Great work!
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That's the difference between us, you see. I fired through this way faster than you did. Oh yeah, I'm making dramatic claims here like a boss.
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Video game progress is a thing that will occur within the next seven years. Possibly the next few hours but maybe not
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Alright, I guess it's time to go help the Nora, those people who I totally haven't gone ages without interacting with at all.

Our journey begins with a bit of traveling to stock up on medicine, then it's homeward we go. Unable to teleport directly into Nora territory, I go to a campfire outside one of the gates and immediately spawn next to a Corruptor. That was fair, game. It goes down pretty easy though, especially since a Watcher is all the help it had. Signs of a battle are everywhere here, wonder just how much chaos will await further in? Walking inside I immediately stumble across a Deathbringer and some buddies, so this is probably not going to be just one big battle at the end of a casual stroll, but rather a grind to even get close to my destination. The Deathbringer is accompanied by at least one Corruptor and some other dudes, so that's...a pretty nasty fight that I'm not sure I want a part of when I can just slip by it and pick off some cultists in the nearby town to clear an easier path.

Actually it turns out the smoke from all the fires (plus the rain) make seeing enemies at long range very difficult, so cleaning out the dudes is tough...and unnecessary, when I can just sneak past this whole area. I'm likely just going to play this stealthy until I get to where I start having to kill things to make progress. Doesn't look like all that long a walk from here. I have to say it's kind of crazy that the Eclipse, despite the massive losses they've suffered at my hands over the course of the game, can still field a gigantic army here in the Embrace no problem. And that they managed to get in here by stealth when it was established earlier in the game that the Carja have the entrances to Nora territory pretty well guarded to keep track of who is coming and going. Especially since they have Corruptors and Deathbringers with them. I'm going to assume that the references earlier to the Eclipse being a cult within the Shadow Carja were kind of misleading and in truth they basically run the Shadow Carja (the scene at the Sun Ring with Helis sure seemed that way), since otherwise this would be beyond implausible. It strains credibility a bit as it is.

Slipping past a couple of enemies on the road, we get to Mother's Watch, where a bunch of dudes and two Corruptors are lurking. Ah, the good old days of fighting a Corruptor here. A mixture of stealth and blast sling attacks wipe out almost everything, leaving a single Corruptor to be fought head on. Man, the nostalgia is off the charts, I remember when one of these things took forever to kill in this very place. Now it's time to head up on the mountain. I'm sure there will be more unpleasant surprises ahead, but with luck I'll get into that door inside All-Mother and find out some more stuff as well.
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Moving further up I can hear some metallic stomping sounds, which remind me the Deathbringers although this doesn't seem to be quite the same sound. Some cultists and a Corrupted Scrapper go down, and looking up the hill with the power of PURPLEVISION I can see what I think is making that sound...a Corrupted Thunderjaw. Oh man, the game's pulling out the big guns on me. There's going to be a Corrupted Stormbird at some time too, isn't there? And I've still never even killed one of those so I'll little idea how to fight it...welp. Maybe it won't happen, but I assume it will. This Thunderjaw I at least know how to fight, if I can face it down without any other enemies noticing I feel pretty confident I can handle it without too much trouble. Unfortunately, it's surrounded by Eclipse, but as I get a bit closer to try to start picking them off, a cutscene plays. Sona and Varl are here and they're brought some reinforcements, waiting for their moment to strike...which they decide is right now. Epic battle time? Epic battle time.

That got uglier than I would have liked it to, mainly because with all the dead bodies and the heavy weapons dropped by two Eclipse guys, the Disc Launchers were too hard to actually find once they'd been shot off so I had to take that Thunderjaw down without using its weapons against it. Took a lot of damage but in the end, we won. Varl gives us a heads up on how badly the Nora have been hurt and also informs us Matriarch Teersa (remember her?) decided to ignore the taboo about non-Matriarchs entering the mountain in order to let people take shelter inside. Good old Teersa, not being an idiot. The other one, Lansra, objected but that's to be expected. Now time to head inside the mountain and see what we can learn...and probably also have a confrontation with the Matriarchs over the fact that we know their sacred mountain is actually home to one of Cradle sites from Zero Dawn, and thus a lot more mechanical than they'd probably like.

Well, the Matriarch business goes pretty smoothly, and we head inside. Seems like the facility had some serious problems that prevented it from working properly, and it eventually dumped people into the outside world only partially prepared. Looks like it at least worked out in the end though, and it certainly explains how the Nora came to view the mountain as a goddess. Then the big reveal...Gaia was forced to deactivate itself as a precautionary measure against some sort of mysterious virus that set all its subroutines running amok. However, Hades seemed to think that went against its role and tried to prevent it, which I guess explains why its still active. We need to head somewhere to try to reboot Gaia to get everything back under control. Oh, and Aloy was designed by Gaia in its final moments to be almost an exact clone of Elizabet Sobeck so she'd be able to enter the various DNA identity locked facilities, a reveal that shocks her and leads to more douchebaggery from Sylens.

On the way out, the Nora pretty much start worshiping Aloy, who gets pretty frustrated at the quick turnaround from the days when they shunned her as an outcast. She chews them out for it, Varl asks how he can help, and it was agreed that those who want to help her will be made Seekers so they can go to Meridian, presumably to form an alliance against the Shadow Carja and their efforts to help Hades fuck up the world. The Nora continue to be pretty worshipful of Aloy, which I guess she just decides to put up with?

We also learn Rost's story. This post is getting too full as it is so all I'll say is I didn't see it coming, I was expecting something related to the main plot instead. Kind of interesting, and yet another reason to think the Nora are kind of bozos.

Anyway. Off to "The Bitter Climb" to find Gaia PRIME and try to reboot it and get the world to unfuck itself before its too late
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Hype for the next quest.

I liked that Aloy is basically Elizabet's granddaughter via GAIA and how much it made Lansra look like a dumbass.
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What is Rost's story?
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IfGodCouldDie posted...

What is Rost's story?

Some people from outside Nora land came attacked a village and took some hostages, for reasons that were never discovered. They were tracked, but they killed a hostage whenever the Nora got too close. Eventually they left Nora territory, but they killed their remaining hostages when they did and left the bodies just outside the border, knowing the Nora taboo against leaving the Sacred Lands would prevent the bodies from being recovered. Rost was one of the braves tracking them, and his daughter was one of the victims. He ended up choosing to do some old Nora ritual to be a "Death Seeker", someone they believe has left his spirit behind in All-Mother Mountain and can thus allow his body and mind to go outside Nora territory to die in the process of seeking vengeance.

He ultimately succeeded in hunting down and killing the attackers, but was badly injured in the process. He dragged himself back to Nora land in the hopes of dying as close to home as possible, but someone who had also lost family in the attack saw him and broke taboo to cross the border to drag him back and eventually nurse him back to death. A Death Seeker isn't supposed to be allowed back, but the Matriarchs settled on a compromise with him, where he would promise to never speak of what happened and be allowed to live on as an outcast. The Matriarchs eventually gave Aloy to him because they trusted he would raise her to follow Nora tradition, since he wasn't an outcast due to some sort of crime but rather because of a decision he made out of his sincere belief in the Nora way.
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A surprisingly uneventful trip north ensues. I say that because I came across a pair of Thunderjaws wandering together, saw a Stormbird in the distance, saw another Stormbird that I passed somewhat close to (man you can see Stormbirds and Thunderjaws from a mile away), saw two Longlegs and a Sawtooth fighting some bandits (the bandits won, oddly enough), came across another Thunderjaw with some Longlegs, saw some Snapmaws, passed by a Behemoth convoy...and yet a single Scrapper is all I actually fought. Hooray? That brings me to what seems like the last campfire before I head on up to what I assume will be either the last or second last part of the game (just a matter of whether everything finishes off up here or if we go back to Meridian/Sunfall to settle the Carja civil war down there as well, unless I'm wrong and the plot manages to find even more for me to do). This might be another stretch where I forego the detailed summary of events because I'm too caught up in it to take a break...

Well, first up I have to climb up and deal with some Stalkers. Haven't seen those in ages, only ever killed the one that showed up on that one side quest way back when. Waaaayyyy back when...these things are no slouches when you have to deal with multiple. Looks like kind of a long walk to my destination so I guess I will be providing some detail as I go along for now. There seem to be some motion detecting mines on the ground that shoot up flares when I go nearby (or hit them with a rock or arrow), I guess those are there to make it harder to just sneak past the entire encounter?

A snowstorm begins as we climb up some conveniently placed handholds (got to love these yellow poles just stuck everywhere I need to go, don't know where I'd be without them), and it looks like there's Glinthawks to deal with. Yay. Okay several Glinthawks and two Ravagers and some Redeye Watchers. That could have gone a lot smoother, didn't see just how many enemies there were before I alerted them. Turned what should have been a nice slow shooting gallery into a frantic scramble. Still quite a ways to go, I'm going to assume there will probably be at least two more encounters before I get inside this place...and then probably Eclipse or something shows up once I do. At least there's a vantage along the way for me to collect. But before I can get to that, I come up a cliff, and...Stormbird time. I had a feeling one of these would appear before too long.

Holy every lasting shit that thing was brutal. Forget the Thunderjaw, forget the Deathbringer, THIS thing is a monster. Also it makes sounds that remind me of Legiana in Monster Hunter World, but that's neither here nor there. Seems to be easily lit on fire, but it doesn't crash like Glinthawks do nor does it take much damage from it, and the rest of its parts seem to take an incredible number of hits to actually break. Endless HP, hits like a truck, leaves huge area of effect pools down behind it, has nasty melee attacks even on the ground...wow. Aloy even comments after that she hopes that's the biggest guard Gaia has, and I agree whole heartedly (and the machine catalogue suggests it is, at least!). Hopefully that was the last encounter up here before whatever awaits me inside my destination.

Well, going to collect this vantage and then head on in. If this is the endgame, it looks like I'll be finished with this game fairly soon.
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Well that was a bit shorter than expected. Probably because I'm not quite done yet!

Heading up the mountain, we discover the facility is partially intact, partially broken down. Sylens greets us via hologram, revealing he's had a workshop up here for ages as he's tried to get inside this place. We go through a lot of wandering, climbing and hear a lot of info about how the Alphas (the leaders of each division of Project Zero Dawn) were living out their lives and trying to get the finishing touches on the project complete. Then it turns out there was some sort of mistake with the sealing of the facility, and it would allow the swarm of Faro robots to detect the place. The only way to fix it was to go outside and seal it manually, which would be a death sentence for whoever did it. And while the rest of the group was arguing, Elizabet went out and did herself, unsurprisingly.

And then we find out why Apollo (the cumulative knowledge of humanity) was never delivered to the people in the Cradle facilities...because Ted Faro decided it would poison the minds of the future people and so he sabotaged it. And also killed the Alphas, because why not at that point. Congrats Horizon, you just went from having Ted Faro be an interesting villainous figure who fucked up the world but is human enough to be horrified at the consequences...to having him seem like a nonsense caricature who just does random evil shit because he's the villain and the writers couldn't conceive of a villain who doesn't toss in some pointless evil shit here and there even if it doesn't fit the character. Hooray for stupid cartoon villains.

Anyway, we get the Master Override that will allow us to destroy Hades, and then climbing out, we meet Sylens in person and learn his full story. He is the guy who discovered Hades in the first place, and worked with it for a while because it offered him knowledge in return. When the Shadow Carja were cast out of Meridian, he took advantage of the situation to introduce their leaders to Hades, thus establishing the Eclipse. Sylens apparently did feel some guilt at one point when he first saw the old war machines being dug up, but not enough to actually leave. He only departed when, upon getting the Focus network up on running, he used a back door in the programming he had put in just in case to overhear Hades ordering him killed (guess he outlived his usefulness) and so he ran away.

He also revealed that the Spire, the tower Meridian is built around, is part of the system Gaia used in the past to send the signal that would shut down the robot swarms once it cracked their deactivation codes, and Hades is out to take control of it so he can use it to reactive the old robots and use them wipe out all life and start again. It presumably is unaware Gaia is no longer functional enough to actually restart things again, or maybe it's just gone totally rogue and doesn't care.

So. Off to Meridian, for what I assume will be the final battle with the Eclipse/Shadow Carja. I don't know if they'll drag Hades along with them or if I'll be able to destroy it from the Spire somehow or if I'll have to hunt it down, but either way I feel like it's pretty safe to say the next update you get will be once I've finished the game (watch something crazy happens to prove me wrong now)
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I always took Ted deleting Apollo to be him trying to make sure no one in the future would know the end of the world was his fault and the whole "it'll poison future generations" thing was his way of rationalizing that.

IIRC the game kind of implies it and it's well within what we see of his character.
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Panthera posted...

On the way out, the Nora pretty much start worshiping Aloy, who gets pretty frustrated at the quick turnaround from the days when they shunned her as an outcast. She chews them out for it

I thought this was one of the most satisfying moments. Was saying "fuck yeah" under my breath even. I didn't think she was going to
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Murphiroth posted...

I always took Ted deleting Apollo to be him trying to make sure no one in the future would know the end of the world was his fault and the whole "it'll poison future generations" thing was his way of rationalizing that.

IIRC the game kind of implies it and it's well within what we see of his character.

Yeah this. The guilt of what he had done drove him half-mad as well. I think the audio logs throughout the mission but before the final hologram showed his descent into madness very well, especially once Sobeck was dead and thus unable to keep him in check

This is why everyone agrees on the one universal truth: fuck Ted Faro
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And then it was over

We visit Avad to warn him of the imminent threat, and travel around talking to a ton of familiar faces, people we've worked with in main or side quests before who have come to help out. Then it's time to sleep (in Olin's old apartment, of all places) before the final battle.

Things get off to quite the start, with an army of Deathbringers breaking holes in the walls and gates, but more to the point, Helis and some minions burst in beneath our position, and Aloy heads down to finally be rid of him for good. A pretty tough battle ensues and Aloy finally avenges Rost and co in a badass scene, I picked the "nice" option with trepidation that it would end up too soft, but instead Aloy answers Helis' lament at not actually being a chosen one by pointing out that nothing that was going on was destined, all the death and destruction for nothing because of his choice to serve a power he barely understands. She tells him to face the sun before stabbing him in the throat. Amazing scene.

We hurry down to the ridge and find ourselves beset from all sides by an army of corrupted machines backed up by Deathbringers and Corruptors. Fortunately we have some Oseram heavy weapons to help out, these things are basically rapid fire grenade launchers and they make short work of most enemies, but the sheer number of enemies makes for a tough fight. Especially when the Corrupted Stormbird shows up. Holy shit if it weren't for those fancy cannons that would have been impossible. The battle ends with rubble collapsing and taking Aloy out for a while, though not before she sees a Deathbringer dragging Hades along with it. She wakes up to follow, cutting down a couple of machines before seeing that Hades has begun its transmission, waking up Deathbringers across the map. We hurry up to the Spire, meet Erend, Varl the badass and Sona who are ready to follow us, and together we head up for our final battle.

Hades calls a Deathbringer to defend it, which is accompanied by everything imaginable as the fight goes on. I feel like this Deathbringer has much more health than any previous ones, it took insane punishment to bring that thing down. Corruptors and Ravagers and Longlegs and probably some more things I'm forgetting joined the fray, all while the Deathbringer fired away its steady stream of machine guns and missiles, and it took a ton of resources, but in the end they were finally all destroyed. Aloy approaches Hades and activates the master override, and just like that, it's over. The Faro war machines woken by Hades deactivate and everything is good.

In the ending, Aloy heads off to find Elizabet Sobeck's old home where she went to die after sealing herself out of Gaia Prime, listening to one of her audio logs we had recovered but not yet fully decoded along the way. Everything ends on a nice, pleasant note...until after the credits, where Hades seems to briefly reactive to send out a signal, which seems to lead to Sylens capturing Hades. He has more information he wants to find out, like the identity of who he calls the Masters, the ones who sent the signal that activated Hades in the first place (throughout the credits, this was my main question actually, why Hades got turned on and what sent the signal that made Gaia lose control). As the camera pans out, we see he's standing by the remains of a Horus...now there's a sequel hook for you.

And that's Horizon Zero Dawn. I'll probably do a more detailed write up later of my overall thoughts, but I'll give you a preview by saying I'm pretty confident in saying this is going into my top ten games of all time. Maybe top five even. So for everyone who has been reading, thanks for joining me on this little project. It's been a hell of a ride.
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Oh wow, I didn't think you liked it that much!

I really loved the game. Might be my favourite of the gen but idk.

A pretty tough battle ensues and Aloy finally avenges Rost and co in a badass scene, I picked the "nice" option with trepidation that it would end up too soft, but instead Aloy answers Helis' lament at not actually being a chosen one by pointing out that nothing that was going on was destined, all the death and destruction for nothing because of his choice to serve a power he barely understands. She tells him to face the sun before stabbing him in the throat. Amazing scene.

Yeah. I was surprised she went that hard, but it was so great and satisfying. Helis is far from an iconic villain but god he's a bastard.
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Did you do the dlc?
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XIII_rocks posted...

Murphiroth posted...

I always took Ted deleting Apollo to be him trying to make sure no one in the future would know the end of the world was his fault and the whole "it'll poison future generations" thing was his way of rationalizing that.

IIRC the game kind of implies it and it's well within what we see of his character.

Yeah this. The guilt of what he had done drove him half-mad as well. I think the audio logs throughout the mission but before the final hologram showed his descent into madness very well, especially once Sobeck was dead and thus unable to keep him in check

This is why everyone agrees on the one universal truth: fuck Ted Faro

Alright so to get back to this, I think my problem is I was worried when Faro was first introduced that he was just going to be a boring evil dude who doomed the world for little reason beyond being a boring evil dude, and I liked the fact that he ended up not seeming evil in any deliberate sense, just a guy who didn't think through the consequences of the work he was doing and was suitably horrified when he finally realized what he's brought about. So to have him turn around and fuck the world over more knowingly kind of undermines that for me.

The thing is, I can see the logic behind a character arc where he goes mad from guilt and eventually gets paranoid that knowledge will make people follow in his foot steps, but he's a guy we see a couple of hologram recordings of total, which isn't enough time to show that in a way that really resonates. And the fact that he outright killed the Alphas just doesn't seem to fit the character at all, it didn't really serve any purpose (given how vast an undertaking Apollo was, a handful of people in a sealed bunker couldn't hope to replicate it from scratch) beyond just making his scumbaggery intentional when it had always seemed unintentional previously.
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He killed them because they'd just rebuild Apollo. He was batshit crazy from guilt at that point.
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XIII_rocks posted...

Oh wow, I didn't think you liked it that much!

It's funny, if people had asked how I was enjoying it you'd have known, but since no one did I just kind of kept rambling, and left to my own devices, my writing style tends to focus mainly on either dwelling on negative things, (bad) jokes or matter of fact statements. I'm usually the type to complain the whole time I play a game about everything that bugs me, then look back on it fondly, so the fact that I seemed neutral a lot instead of negative is actually a sign I was hooked <_<

XIII_rocks posted...

Yeah. I was surprised she went that hard, but it was so great and satisfying. Helis is far from an iconic villain but god he's a bastard.

Yeah, he was a pretty generic concept for a villain but quite well executed, only real problem I had with him is he was absent from the plot for such a long time, even when you were fighting the Eclipse they started seeming like just an obstacle rather than anything important until fairly late when they got tied back into the story. And that final scene was legit amazing.

IfGodCouldDie posted...

Did you do the dlc?

No, I generally don't buy DLC unless it's a "Complete Edition"/"Game of the Year" edition type thing that I buy. And in this case, I bought a used copy of the original release of the game...and then like two days later the store I got it from had a used copy of the Complete Edition version for the same damn price lol.
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You gotta do the Frozen Wilds man. You won't be disappointed.
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What is the Frozen Wilds all about anyway? How long is it, is it mostly combat or is there a story (and a present day one or is there stuff about the past too), etc. DLC generally has to be pretty appealing to make me want to spend money on it
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